Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-07-09

pulpit on wheels. Inc cnufcH wants
not 50 much cushions rs 1t wants sad,
| die bags and arrows. We have got to
put aside the gown and the kid gloves
nd put on the hunting shirt. We have
been fishing so long in the brooks that
run under the shadow of the church
that the fish know us, and they avoid
the hook, and escape as soon rs we
come to the bank, while yonder is
Upper Saranac and Big Tupper's lake,
where the first swing of the gospel net
would break it for the multitude of the
fishes. There il outside
WORK TO BE DONE.
What is that | see in the backwoods?
1t is a tent. The hunters have made a
clearing and camped out. What do
they care if they have wet feet, or if
they have nothing but a pine branch
Cor 81 pillow, or for the northeast storm?
If n moose in the darkness steps into
the lake to drink they hear it right
away. II Il loon cry in the midnight,
they hear it. SO in the service of God
we have exposed work. We have got
10 camp out and rough it. We are
putting all our care on the 10000
people Of Brooklyn, who, they say,
come to church What are we doing
for the 700, 1000 that do not come?
Have they DO souls? Are they sinless
that they need no pardon? Are there
no dead IN their houses that they need
no comfort? Are they cut of from God,
to 60 into eternity 10 wing to bear
them, no light to cheer them, no well
come to greet them? | hear to-day
surging up from the lower depths of
Brooklyn Il groan that comes through
christian assemblages and through our
christian churches; and it blots out all
this scene from my eyes to-day, as by
the mists of a great Niagara, for the
dash and the plunge of these great
torrents of life dropping down into
the fathomless and laundering abyss of
SUFFERING AND WOE.
| sometimes think that just as God
blotted out the Church of Thyatira and
Corinth and Laodicea, because of their
sloth and stolidity, He will blot out
American and English christianity and
raise on the ruins Il stalwart, wide
awake, missionary church, that can
take the full meaning of that command:
''Go into all the world, and preach
the Gospel to every creature. He that
believeth and is baptized shall be
saved, and he that believeth not shall
be damned"
remark further, if you want to sue
ceed in gospel hunting you must have
courage. If the hunter stand with
trembling hand or shoulder that
flinches with fear, instead of his taking
the catamount the catamount takes
him. What should become of the
Greenlander If, when out hunting for
the bear, he should stand shivering
with terror on an icebergp What
would have become of Du Challiu and
Livingston in the African thicket. with
a faint heart and "a weak kneep When
a panther comes within twenty PAGES
of you, and it has its eye on YOU, and
it has ~squatted for the fearful spring,
rs eady there"
Courage, o we spiritual hunters!
There are great monsters of ~iniquity
DioN III All dlOuJu dDOul Ltt COll-
munity. Shall we not in the strength
of God go forth and combat them? We
not only need more heart, but more
backbone. What is the
CHURCH OF O
that it should fear to look in the eve
any transgressionP There is the Ben
gal tiger of drunkenness that prowls
{. ra,,n nnI ;..al &c s-. -
how many of us hide under the church
pew or the communion tablep There
is SO much invested in it we are afraid
to assault it; millions of dollars in bar
rels, IN watts, in spigots, in corkscrews,
in GIN palaces with marble floors and
Italian marble-top tables, and chased
ice-coolers, and in the strychnine, and
the logwood, and the tartaric acid. and
the nuX vomica, that 90 to make up
our pure" American drinks. | looked
with wondering eyes on the ''Hcidel-
berg tun.' 1t is the great liquor vat
of Germany, which is said to hold
eight hundred hogsheads of wine, and
only three times in a hundred years
has it been filled. But, rs / stood and
looked at it, | said to myself: THAT
is nothing eight hundred hogsheads.
Why, our American vat holds four
million five hundred thousand barrels
Of strong drinks, and we keep three
hundred thousand men with nothing to
do but to see that it is filed On, to
attack this great
MONSTER OF INTEMPERANCE,
and the kindred monsters of fraud and
~uncleanness, requires you to rally all
your Christian courage. Through the
press, through the pulpit, through the
platform you must assault it. Would
to God that all our American Christians
would band together, not for crack
Drained fanaticism, but for holy Chris
tian reform. l think it was in 1893
that there went out srom Lucknow,
India, uEder the sovereign, the great
est hunting party that was ever pro-
iected. There were ten thousand
armed men in that hunting party.
There were camels, and horses and
elephants On scme princes rode, and
royal ladies under exquisite housings.
and five hundr, d coolies waited upon
the tram, ard the desolate places of
India were invaded by this excursion,
and the rhiaNCeroS. and deer, and ele-